[The Witcher Thread] HEARTS OF STONE xp out 13/10/15. Comes with 2 physical gwent decks

Deaderinred

REAL TIME BEARD GROWTH. WITCHING EVOLVED.

PLACE YOUR BETS FEB 24th May 19, 2015 on xbone ps4 and PeeCee!
The only hype you need:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtVdAasjOgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-l29HlKkXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYwe_WHARdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBoCRYX6Vq0

That 90's chocobo racing obsession is back!

PRE-ORDER NOW FROM GOG! If you own Witcher 1 and 2 on gog you can get a big discount! 27% off! Also comes with beta access to Witcher Adventure board game! A free copy of Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Edition! and all the usual digital goodies you'd expect from GOG, Comics! Soundtracks! Artbooks! Maps! Fun! Exclamation points!

Collectors edition! BLOODY EXPENSIVE (94 quid! 129 quids!) But pre-order from all the usual retail/online places! I have! TOO LATE SOLD OUT


System Requirements revealed edit: these min specs are overthetop, so dont worry if you fall below. if you could run witcher 2 at ultra and get between 40-60fps you'll be fine running witcher 3 at 30fps with a mix of medium/high/ultra

Minimum System Requirements

Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz
AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940
Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 660
AMD GPU Radeon HD 7870
RAM 6GB
OS 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1)
DirectX 11
HDD Space 40 GB
Recommended System Requirements

Intel CPU Core i7 3770 3,4 GHz
AMD CPU AMD FX-8350 4 GHz
Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 770
AMD GPU Radeon R9 290
RAM 8GB
OS 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows 8 (8.1)
DirectX 11
HDD Space 40 GB

Retrospectives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiqMr0OvQog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSftIRQzYCM

Quick recap of the story so far...

EXPANSIONS AND DLC!
There will be 16 FREE dlcs released with what seems to be (so far) 2 released each week. so far announced are:

Temerian Armour set (released!)
Beard and Hairstyle set (released!)
Alternate Look for Yennefer
Contract: Missing Miners
the rest have not been announced yet.

2 Major Expansions! proper addons!

These are paid and you can buy the pass now at gog/steam!

Heart of Stone is scheduled for release October 2015
Heart of Stone will be a major expansion that will total at over 10 hours of additional content.
Geralt will adventure into the wilds of No Man's Land and the nooks and alleys of Oxenfurt, where he will try to complete a contract from the mysterious Man of Glass.
Caught in a thick tangle of deceit, Geralt will need all his cunning and strength to solve the mystery and emerge unscathed.

Blood and Wine is scheduled for release first quarter 2016
Blood and Wine is a major expansion that will total at over 20 hours of additional content.
A tale that will introduce the all-new in-game region of Toussaint, will take Geralt to a land untainted by war, where an atmosphere of carefree indulgence and knightly ritual masks an ancient, bloody secret.

MODS!:

http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/? (WARNING -SOON TO BE NSFW- NEXUS: this is the nexus/internet afterall so i figured a warning was due, there is nothing weird on there yet but give it time, give it time.)
https://sfx.thelazy.net/games/game/970/

of course the game is moddable, no word on when official tools will be released but they are coming! so far we have a lot of ease of life stuff for any of the those rpg mechanics you probably don't like and lots of "recolour my game!" options.

SCREENSHOTS:

if you install this mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/28/? it unlocks the debug menu (it doesn't overwrite anything either) which you can bring down with ` as usual.

now if you're fighting or find a decent screen ripe for combat, hit esc to pause, then bring the console and do this:

1: type "testpause" this pauses the game fully. (without the quotes)
2: hit f1 to turn on freecam. you can now move the camera around (works with gamepad too i've heard)
3: you can turn off all hud elements via the hud config menu, all except creature names when you look at them, its a bit annoying.
4: once you've set up a shot and taken a screenshot (with fraps or your screenshot program of choice) hit f1 to come out of freecam and then pause the game again and type in the console "testunpause"

pausing the game again before you type testunpause is important if you are in the middle of a fight. you can still use free cam via f1 without pausing if you want do something like this:

its a bit involved at the moment (really needs a complete hud disable command) but you take decent shots now if you wish.

Performance Tips:

A thread over at cdprojekred has a compendium of tweaks and performance tips with a breakdown of which graphics settings does which/fps cost.

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/36088-A-compendium-of-tweaks-and-fixes-for-the-PC-version?p=1658887#post1658887

also contains a quick, texture improvement ini. setting tweak which features no fps hit!

Navigate to "...\Documents\The Witcher 3" and open the "user.settings" file with a text editor such as Notepad, then manually add the following section and variable at the very end:

[Streaming/Textures]
UseMipRefiner=true

The addition of this variable will force the game to use much higher quality mip textures, improving the visual fidelity of the game at little to no performance cost! See it in action - ON, OFF

Remember to save your changes upon closing the "user.settings" file!

Some quick tips and tricks from the good folks in the thread.

Shadows are the biggest fps drain, putting them on low will still give you shadows on anything but save you 10
foliage distance is a killer too when at high or ultra, water too and so is in-game AA (if you want better AA at a low fps cost, check out Reshade and apply SMAA)
i have below min specs and i can run the game with textures, details, landmass all at ultra and get 30fps, it will flux from 22 to 30 but turn off fraps and it's barely noticeable and i play on Death March (though not at 1080p, 1360x768 is my native monitor res and SMAA takes care of the lower resolution jaggies)

Morninglord wrote: »

http://www.pcgamer.com/durantes-witcher-3-analysis-the-alchemy-of-smoothness/

it describes how to get extremely smooth gameplay with little input lag. really ups the games general responsiveness to inputs.

Frei wrote: »

if you're playing PC with an xbox controller, go to whatever folder your game is installed in and then open "The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\config\platform\pc\", open the "platformgameplay.ini" with notepad or something and make this change:

LeftStickSensitivity=1.0

really makes a big difference in regards to movement, much more fluid/responsive, try it out. you may not like it if you're used to the awkward start/stopping and stumbling about.

Tierwulf wrote: »

Ok something that may be viable to go into the OP:

Stacking Delusion with Puppet will screw it up where puppet when holding Q will not cast. After the last time of not having delusion equipped and going into a conversation that I could have used it, I looked for an answer online. If you go to my documents\witcher 3 and open up input.settings (NOT input.qwerty in your witcher 3 steam folder) with notepad, do a ctrl+f on castsignhold and modify:

IK_Q=(Action=CastSignHold,State=Duration,IdleTime =0.2)

Change the 0.2 to 0.01

You will need to do this for multiple entries, just keep letting it find castsignhold until you get to the bottom (around 4 entries or so?)

It fixed it for me at least and I'm guessing next patch will probably resolve it anyway.

Deaderinred wrote: »

ATTENTION GOG GALAXY/SWEETFX USERS:

the latest gog galaxy and witcher 3 dlc update fucking breaks sweetfx usage for no known reason. you can fix this shit by deleting the "d3d11.dll" that it adds (for no fucking reason) from the witcher 3 bin dir where sweetfx is installed and the exe is located. YOU WILL NEED TO REINSTALL reshade/sweetfx via the dll install system too, if you dont know what im talking about then you dont use reshade/sweetfx that way you can run it through steam again and run sweetfx again.

jesus i almost had an heart attack by this.

Deaderinred

Added in a bunch of info and story recaps and other stuff i stole from around the web. @ me if you have any good tips or stuff worth putting in the OP. note i can get very lazy maintaining it, but i'll try.

edit: just realized i still haven't found the horse racing track yet.

Magus`

WTB console patch.

Fondor_Yards

One of my proudest moments was just now killing a Foglet as it came out of cloak by tracking it's movement by the grass it displaced.

Sevorak

Dr. Chaos wrote: »

Frei wrote: »

Dr. Chaos wrote: »

Played my first Ciri mission. Was kind of a let down.

Isn't she supposed to be some sort of demigod sorceress witcher god queen? All I got to play with in that mission was a teleporting dash thing.

She's different for sure but found myself wanting to get back to Geralt and his rugged badass cyncism.

No? And using her powers attracts the Wild Hunt, anyway.

She's got a pretty impressive resume in her character bio. Might have overhyped her for me.

I assumed she was a potential sorceress based on it sounding like she could wield magic (that source thing). Is there some reason in the books that was told why she never officially became a Witcher? Seeing as how she doesn't have the crazy eyes.

Only males can survive the Trial of the Grasses.

arakis99

So, what zone is the zone to go to after White Orchard? Hopefully it's not Velen, because then I would need to kick the designers in the nads.

akajaybay

It's Velen. Don't try and do random ? in the area where you immediately arrive in it. Basically the combined Velen/Novigrad map will be keeping you occupied for a LONG time. Progress the main quest a ways and your level will normalize a bit with what's around. You'll get contracts for stuff that recommends level 20-30 mixed in with contracts for level 7.

Lorahalo

Sevorak wrote: »

Dr. Chaos wrote: »

Frei wrote: »

Dr. Chaos wrote: »

Played my first Ciri mission. Was kind of a let down.

Isn't she supposed to be some sort of demigod sorceress witcher god queen? All I got to play with in that mission was a teleporting dash thing.

She's different for sure but found myself wanting to get back to Geralt and his rugged badass cyncism.

No? And using her powers attracts the Wild Hunt, anyway.

She's got a pretty impressive resume in her character bio. Might have overhyped her for me.

I assumed she was a potential sorceress based on it sounding like she could wield magic (that source thing). Is there some reason in the books that was told why she never officially became a Witcher? Seeing as how she doesn't have the crazy eyes.

Only males can survive the Trial of the Grasses.

Plus nobody knows how to perform the Trial any more. The knowledge was lost when Kaer Morhen was attacked. Vesemir was the only survivor who was a teacher there and he was a fencing instructor, not in charge of the mutagens. The other Witchers were all out on the Path during the attack.

Lorahalo

Also happy to see the grand tradition of the Geralt gif is still alive and well.

I love that picture so much.

Dr. Chaos

Damn...Yoana's (one of the blacksmiths in the baron's place in Velen) monster deck is absolutely monstrous.

Think I've finally met my match in Gwent after breezing through everybody else. Might have to hold off on challenging her for awhile. Can't see myself breaking through the way her cards keep hitting those evil combo effects.

GnomeTank

In keeping with "Great fluff lines tossed out by NPC's", I heard one last night that had me laughing pretty hard:

Random Dwarf: "Oh, dwarves popped Snow White's cherry? How convenient, something else to blame dwarves for"

Lorahalo

Monster decks are the easiest for me to beat actually. If you can bait out their big combo cards (like the vampires, nekkers, arachas, and crones) and then just dump a great big Biting Cold on them, they're easy as piss. It was harder before I had two 10 strength melee hero cards, now I can just dump those in melee and put down some cold to make half their deck useless.

Monster decks are terrifying if you don't draw a cold card though. Fuck that.

Lorahalo

Hell, just baiting out the combo cards and intentionally losing the first round also works. Monster decks are strong, but they're really a one trick pony. Beat the monster spam + horn combo and they're super easy.

Kaboodles_The_Assassin

I enjoy riding up to a pack of wolves and hearing the fight music build up, only for it to peter out as I ignore the wolves entirely and go merrily on my way. I like to imagine the orchestra and chorus shaking their heads and throwing frustrated glances in my direction.

GnomeTank wrote: »

In keeping with "Great fluff lines tossed out by NPC's", I heard one last night that had me laughing pretty hard:

Random Dwarf: "Oh, dwarves popped Snow White's cherry? How convenient, something else to blame dwarves for"

Fun Fact: The Snow White story is actually an event in the Witcher universe, with a grimdark twist.

Lorahalo

I love the grimdark twists on fairy tales in the Witcher-verse. Like how

Spoilers for the books I guess?

The emperor of Nilfgaard spent a whole bunch of years living out Beauty and the Beast before Geralt saved him and turned him back into a man. Yet he's still such a jerk to Geralt. Goddamn it Emhyr, you ungrateful fuck. Dude saved you from furry hell and practically raised your daughter!

Dr. Chaos

Lorahalo wrote: »

Monster decks are the easiest for me to beat actually. If you can bait out their big combo cards (like the vampires, nekkers, arachas, and crones) and then just dump a great big Biting Cold on them, they're easy as piss. It was harder before I had two 10 strength melee hero cards, now I can just dump those in melee and put down some cold to make half their deck useless.

Monster decks are terrifying if you don't draw a cold card though. Fuck that.

Unfortunately, the highest I got in my northern deck right now is a 6.

Right now, she's got the numbers and synergy over me. I could probably beat her if I went twenty rounds or so but the odds seem really in her favor.

Biting cold definitely but I think its my ragtag deck doing me right now.

manwiththemachinegun

Holy hell, that launch trailer has some THINGS in it!

BROOOOOOOOOOOOCHE

Also, I love the completely mundane, boring, and hysterical fetch quests Geralt is often sent on by the peasantry. They're awesome.

Dr. Chaos

Woo! Beat her.

Biting cold did indeed save the day. Just barely.

Lorahalo

There is a quest in Novigrad for Zoltan that has a potential reward of 3 rare cards, one of which is a 10 strength hero unit for Northern Kingdoms. If you're a high enough level and trying to get started in Gwent, you should absolutely go do it because hero cards are incredible.

Gaming-Freak

Man, Gwent is so fucking rigged half the time. Everyone will always get their best cards out 2/3 times. Always. Don't even get me started on those Monster deck cheaters and their "I'll pull out a million monsters out of my ass because I always draw Arachas, Vampires, and Crones" BULLSHIT. You basically have to out-smart the AI by pulling out a special card when they think they've won and passed half the time. Some times you'll just get lucky draws, but when you get a nice set-up? Scorched...

metaghost

It's interesting watching that Witcher 1 recap and seeing the depiction of the Wild Hunt (or at least just The King thereof) as a literal spirit. Did previous games make clear that they are actually as depicted in 3? Or did the lore / aesthetic change?

ED!

Gaming-Freak wrote: »

Man, Gwent is so fucking rigged half the time. Everyone will always get their best cards out 2/3 times. Always. Don't even get me started on those Monster deck cheaters and their "I'll pull out a million monsters out of my ass because I always draw Arachas, Vampires, and Crones" BULLSHIT. You basically have to out-smart the AI by pulling out a special card when they think they've won and passed half the time. Some times you'll just get lucky draws, but when you get a nice set-up? Scorched...

Building my Monster deck and that's exactly what I would do. Squirrels have some cards like that as well, which are pretty good. Essentially only keep ONE of the "Muster" cards and guaranteed to put up big numbers.

Frei

that closing line in the last thread, I wonder how long Bobbykins was sitting on that waiting for the thread to hit 100 pages, lol.

I just got to the right level and crafted a matching set of enhanced griffin swords. they're really beautiful, a nice gold trim on the scabbards. and they match on the back, which is great.

it's a shame the griffin chest armor gives Geralt a beer belly.

MechMantis

metaghost wrote: »

It's interesting watching that Witcher 1 recap and seeing the depiction of the Wild Hunt (or at least just The King thereof) as a literal spirit. Did previous games make clear that they are actually as depicted in 3? Or did the lore / aesthetic change?

Neither.

Witcher II establishes that while in general the Wild Hunt goes around as a bunch of spectral projections from their home world as so not to put themselves at undue risk, when they need to get shit done they portal their very-much-meaty asses over to everyone else's world and start causing all kinds of trouble.

Rami

Frei wrote: »

it's a shame the griffin chest armor gives Geralt a beer belly.

That's what the mutton chops and moustache combo is for.

Lorahalo

MechMantis wrote: »

metaghost wrote: »

It's interesting watching that Witcher 1 recap and seeing the depiction of the Wild Hunt (or at least just The King thereof) as a literal spirit. Did previous games make clear that they are actually as depicted in 3? Or did the lore / aesthetic change?

Neither.

Witcher II establishes that while in general the Wild Hunt goes around as a bunch of spectral projections from their home world as so not to put themselves at undue risk, when they need to get shit done they portal their very-much-meaty asses over to everyone else's world and start causing all kinds of trouble.

More on that

It's also difficult for them to teleport in the flesh like that. It's why the King is so interested in Ciri. He wants her Elder Blood in the Wild Hunt so they can use her teleport powers to get around without much of a worry.

Kaboodles_The_Assassin

Lorahalo wrote: »

I love the grimdark twists on fairy tales in the Witcher-verse. Like how

Spoilers for the books I guess?

The emperor of Nilfgaard spent a whole bunch of years living out Beauty and the Beast before Geralt saved him and turned him back into a man. Yet he's still such a jerk to Geralt. Goddamn it Emhyr, you ungrateful fuck. Dude saved you from furry hell and practically raised your daughter!

Yeah that part of the game was a pretty big spoiler for the books for me

I had no idea Emhyr was Ciri's dad. I had only read up to Baptism of Fire, so that was a bit of a surprise.

Also, muster cards in Gwent are fucking bullshit.

manwiththemachinegun

MechMantis wrote: »

metaghost wrote: »

It's interesting watching that Witcher 1 recap and seeing the depiction of the Wild Hunt (or at least just The King thereof) as a literal spirit. Did previous games make clear that they are actually as depicted in 3? Or did the lore / aesthetic change?

Neither.

Witcher II establishes that while in general the Wild Hunt goes around as a bunch of spectral projections from their home world as so not to put themselves at undue risk, when they need to get shit done they portal their very-much-meaty asses over to everyone else's world and start causing all kinds of trouble.

Yep, that's after doing a bunch of side quest investigations in Witcher 2.

Astale

Rami wrote: »

Frei wrote: »

it's a shame the griffin chest armor gives Geralt a beer belly.

That's what the mutton chops and moustache combo is for.

Honestly he looks like a grumpy old man most of the time.

A very dirty, grumpy old man.

ocious

I love this game.

Donnicton

Lorahalo wrote: »

MechMantis wrote: »

metaghost wrote: »

It's interesting watching that Witcher 1 recap and seeing the depiction of the Wild Hunt (or at least just The King thereof) as a literal spirit. Did previous games make clear that they are actually as depicted in 3? Or did the lore / aesthetic change?

Neither.

Witcher II establishes that while in general the Wild Hunt goes around as a bunch of spectral projections from their home world as so not to put themselves at undue risk, when they need to get shit done they portal their very-much-meaty asses over to everyone else's world and start causing all kinds of trouble.

More on that

It's also difficult for them to teleport in the flesh like that. It's why the King is so interested in Ciri. He wants her Elder Blood in the Wild Hunt so they can use her teleport powers to get around without much of a worry.

More specifically

They want to use her to "throw open the gate between worlds" - essentially letting them go full army invasion on Geralt's world.

Basically the Wild Hunt comes from a world where the elves are highly imperialistic, racist and xenophobic. They immediately slaughtered all of the humans that landed on their own world with the conjuction and want to do the same with Geralt's world.

Gaming-Freak wrote: »

Man, Gwent is so fucking rigged half the time. Everyone will always get their best cards out 2/3 times. Always. Don't even get me started on those Monster deck cheaters and their "I'll pull out a million monsters out of my ass because I always draw Arachas, Vampires, and Crones" BULLSHIT. You basically have to out-smart the AI by pulling out a special card when they think they've won and passed half the time. Some times you'll just get lucky draws, but when you get a nice set-up? Scorched...

Monster decks are the easiest to deal with - the problems are when you play against a high level Northern Kingdoms or Nilfgaard, and they proceed to draw half their deck with nearly half a dozen spies and then just card you out of existence.

Avallac'h is the most bullshit spy card on the planet.

Lorahalo wrote: »

Sevorak wrote: »

Dr. Chaos wrote: »

Frei wrote: »

Dr. Chaos wrote: »

Played my first Ciri mission. Was kind of a let down.

Isn't she supposed to be some sort of demigod sorceress witcher god queen? All I got to play with in that mission was a teleporting dash thing.

She's different for sure but found myself wanting to get back to Geralt and his rugged badass cyncism.

No? And using her powers attracts the Wild Hunt, anyway.

She's got a pretty impressive resume in her character bio. Might have overhyped her for me.

I assumed she was a potential sorceress based on it sounding like she could wield magic (that source thing). Is there some reason in the books that was told why she never officially became a Witcher? Seeing as how she doesn't have the crazy eyes.

Only males can survive the Trial of the Grasses.

Plus nobody knows how to perform the Trial any more. The knowledge was lost when Kaer Morhen was attacked. Vesemir was the only survivor who was a teacher there and he was a fencing instructor, not in charge of the mutagens. The other Witchers were all out on the Path during the attack.

It's also assumed(though not outright explained one way or the other) that the other Witcher schools also are no longer capable of creating new Witchers, but this game still explores painfully little by way of Witcher lore outside of the gear hunt quests.

Lorahalo

Geralt is a grumpy old man. He's about 100 and lets sarcasm rule his life. Everyone assumes he's boring because his voice is flat, but goddamn does he get some good ones in there. Vesemir is the supreme grumpy old man though. I have no idea how old Vesemir is supposed to be (200 maybe?) but he's got some crazy old man grump going.

Last night I was doing a quest and Geralt had a delightful pun battle with Yennefer about a werewolf problem. It was amazing. I love his humour.

Lorahalo

I love the background of the Wild Hunt

Book spoilers

and how they're basically space elf vikings. None of that "Omen of war" bullshit, just elves from space that raid people because they hate humans.

Dr. Chaos

Roach is really starting to piss me off.

Trying to win the horse races but he keeps randomly freaking out on a clear path for no damn reason. Stopping and allowing Boghdan to get ahead. Ugh.

metaghost

Vague Endish Game Spoilers + Wiki Book stuff regarding Wild Hunt (and how they travel):

I was just poking around for some background on Avvala'ch, and it made me realize how they didn't quite make a coherent case in this game for inter-dimensional travel being actually difficult for The Wild Hunt. Reading about stuff from books shows me that they were repurposing a lot of plot, but in changing some details may have goofed in that regard (i.e. only Ciri can really do that shit).

Like, it kinda seemed as though Caranthir (being a genetic approximation of Ciri's bloodline) was able to zip-zap-zoop legions of goons and ice dogs willy nilly.

MechMantis

Dr. Chaos wrote: »

Roach is really starting to piss me off.

Trying to win the horse races but he keeps randomly freaking out on a clear path for no damn reason. Stopping and allowing Boghdan to get ahead. Ugh.

The way you win horse races is by being a complete and total dick, akin to going 30 in a 55 mph zone.

Gallop only enough to get yourself ahead, then stay at a cantor but (and this is crucial) make sure you keep blocking the idiot trying to overtake you. Running at the cantor makes sure you have enough stamina available in case you fuck up. Making sure Roach's ass is planted firmly in front of the other horse's face means that they can't get ahead of you.

Aumni

I'm like 40+ hours in. Just had a spree of Gwent card collection (of which I have all but my monster deck decked out with hero cards out the wazoo). As I looked at the map before shutting down I looked at my quests and the mini map...I've got at least another 20-30 hours before I even touch Skellige.

Also the whirlwind ability is amazing. My GoTY hands down.

Lorahalo

I've found that Roach likes to do the "random" freakout in the same general places. If you slow to a canter then she won't freak out and you're free to accelerate past it. I've never had to repeat a race more than once because of it.

Roach really doesn't like bridges in those races though. Hates em.

metaghost

Horse Riding, Swimming, and Following NPCs are likely the three worst things in this game. Though the cumbersome inventory/crafting interface is probably the actual worst thing.

If I want to craft something, and the vendor has the goods in stock, just fucking let me hit X to simultaneously buy the goods and make the product.

Gaming-Freak

Gwent's fun when you get a good enough deck, but I think I'm gonna wait for my second playthrough before focusing on completing it all (or at least as much as possible). Reason being is I reaaaally want to get to the end of the game and see the game finished at least once before I go side-quest crazy here. Especially when I want to play through and make different choices in places where it counts.

Dr_Keenbean

Triss, you're just too good for Geralt.